Republicans Draw The Line On Presidential Power Line-Item Veto Of Tax Breaks Is Going Too Far, They Decide

House Republicans say they trust President Clinton to do the right thing if they give him the power to veto specific items in spending bills.

But they clearly don’t trust him with the power to veto juicy tax breaks for special interests.

As House debate got under way Thursday on a bill to allow the president to make so-called line-item vetoes, the GOP lined up solidly against Democratic proposals to include tax breaks as veto-bait.

“That’s too much power to grant to a president,” said William F. Clinger, R-Pa., chairman of the House Government Reform Committee.

Republicans fear Clinton would try to use the power to block some of the tax cuts proposed in the House Republicans’ “Contract with America,” such as a middle-income tax credit for children.

But some of the GOP’s proposed cuts also would benefit large stockholders as well as businesses.

And that, charged Rep. Thomas Barrett, D-Wis., is what really rattles the Republicans. “They don’t want to give up that precious power to slip tax loopholes into the law for special interests.”

That remark ignited an explosion on the House floor as Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., reminded Democrats that he had long sponsored legislation to require individual House members to identify and defend any special tax breaks they slipped into big tax bills.

“For nine long years,” Weldon railed, “the Democratic leadership, then in the majority, blocked my efforts.”

An amendment that would have let the president veto tax breaks was defeated Thursday on a party-line vote of 231-196.

Ironically, the original version of the Contract with America would have authorized line-item vetoes for an array of tax breaks that benefit certain individuals or businesses. But when the government reform panel took up the contract proposal last month, it sought to limit the line-item veto to tax breaks enjoyed by only five or fewer taxpayers.

That set off a raucous debate, and the committee balked at permitting a presidential veto of the really big tax breaks that benefit large classes of taxpayers, and even whole industries. Clinger agreed to raise the veto threshold to 100 or fewer taxpayers, and the bill reported to the House floor contains that provision.

The pending bill would strengthen the president’s hand enormously in curbing spending and even enforcing his own priorities.

Under existing law, the president can veto entire spending bills but cannot “line out” specific items in the bills. He can ask Congress to approve lists of spending rescissions, but if Congress declines to act within 45 days, the rescissions are automatically rejected.

The bill being debated now would require Congress to vote, one way or the other, on the president’s proposed line-item rescissions. If they voted by a simple majority to disapprove the rescissions, he could veto that - and it would take a two-thirds majority to override his action.

House Republican leaders hope to pass the bill on Monday, the 84th birthday of former President Ronald Reagan, an ardent supporter of the line-item veto.